Tempus Edax Rerum
by theone1batman
Summary: This story takes the Dogma of the Suikoden series, and uses it to tell a tale about the world stopping, time stopping, with only a select few allowed to function. Please Read and Review.


_Disclaimer_: The preexisting Suikoden characters and ideas are the sole property of Konami.

**Author's note**: The Title is Latin. "Tempus edax rerum" means, "Time is the devourer of all things." It's a Latin proverb very fitting of this story of apocalyptic times in the world of Suikoden. Just as a note, the first part isn't directed toward the audience, it's a tiny bit of the end. And if you're too dense or don't know enough about Suikoden to know the narrator, it's Geddoe from Suikoden III. Sit back, relax and enjoy...

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_Inhale._

_Just calm down and hold the information in. Let the ensued blood-crazed frenzy sink into your soul. Let the violence of the world be eclipsed by you calm demeanor. Imagine. Let the two-word phrase "Carpe Diem" resonate and echo and breathe into your lips._

_If you want to know the secret of not caring, it's to put nonchalance into your belief structure._

_Just let things sieve through you. Let beauty rekindle your broken heart as your last and dying breaths fade into nevermore. Make the last seconds of your life expand, like an ocean of time, as you swim through it. Doggy paddle to find your childhood memories. Freestyle through your adolescence. Butterfly into adulthood._

_Relax._

_Let me tell the story…_

Two years ago, the universe stopped. The revolution of the earth around the sun screeched to a halt. The earth stopped rotating on its axis. Only twenty-six people on earth could function. If you knew the story of true runes, that might make a bit of sense. Each person entrusted by a true rune trudged through valley after valley of mankind, other living things, no better than stone. After months of reconnaissance on the part of a young traveler named Hugo, it was discovered the only those with a true rune lived in the harmonic world of no movement.

After more research it was discovered that there were only twenty-six of the twenty-seven runes functioning with humanity. Something was wrong with the last rune. No one knew exactly what or why, but the universe stopping had something to do with the fact that a rune was missing.

Therein though, was the problem. No one knew, exactly, what each of the twenty-seven runes did, looked like, or who carried them. Scholars without runes might have maintained such information but they were of no use now. The world was in peril unmatched by any phenomenon observed or contexted by human, duck, werewolf or otherwise eyes ever in the history of the universe.

Age had no meaning.

Death didn't exist.

Nothingness prevailed.

And the crackling flame of life dwindled.

Many a hypothesis was presented as to how this phenomenon of mass proportions could amass and materialize so quickly into a state of perpetual everything.

Change used to be the only constant.

Now the only constant is constancy.

My personal hypothesis was that a true rune that made time exist stopped. Or was destroyed, but to do something like that would take a rune of ultimate power. Not the beast rune or my lightning rune, these powers are trivial, something that could make the intricate cogs of everything decent into oblivion. Whatever power this thing possessed it would be nigh unstoppable. My theory wasn't too far off from the truth.

Other hypotheses also had merit. Hugo's was the world was steadily slowing down until at one point, time combusted. We were here, because the world was created with the runes and to exist, the world, universe, whatever, still needed those fragments of the sword and shield. Hence why _we_ could still move. Time still applied to us. I couldn't tell you now if his was far off or not either.

Hugo and I lived, then, in an abandoned town trying to figure out the pace at which survival was dwindling with our kin. We decided it was best to find more like ourselves and perhaps put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Being as all means of locomotion were stricken by oblivion, our only means of travel was walking, as Hugo had done for reconnaissance earlier. As such, we had many hints to where the others might be.

The first one we found was Chris. She was never hard to find. One of the strongest women I've ever met, steadfast and smart. She was a perfect first recruit in our quest for sanity amongst a reservoir of demented lunacy.

Chris was located in a village miles left of ours, but her village still had people peppered in little pockets, as if frozen in stone. In other words, she purposely lived in a world with the memory of man in it. She purposely wanted to be reminded, day-by-day, that she was either lucky, or cursed. With Chris' history of being a martyr the latter was more probable, but neither would have surprised me.

Our methodical gallivanting earned us some answers to this world with the clock stopped. As we entered the town seemingly vacant, Chris stood amongst the company of many her head bowed in reverence. Calling to her Hugo asked, "Chris, is that you?"

Hugo always had a sort of childishness in him, no matter how old he got. This year, if there still were such things, he would have been twenty. This wasn't a bad trait, I suppose, but it certainly stood out. No matter how apocalyptic the times, he still kept smiles and pleasantries.

Chris, no recognizing him at first, called back, "Who are you? Another demon challenging me?"

"Demon?" I muttered to myself confused.

Hugo with a look of sympathy on his face called again, "No, Chris. I'm not a demon today, or yesterday. Or the day we met. It's me, Hugo, remember?"

Chris turned around, her eyes like stones, and when she saw us, I saw immediate regret on her face, I soon learned why. Sharpened stones like arrowheads flung at us like daggers and were speeding towards Hugo, him looking on like looking at death. Two gave him large gashes on his forehead and cheek another was lodged in his shoulder.

Gazing, with my one eye, I sped foreword, loosing hope in his survival, as Hugo was collapsing like a domino to the dirt floor below. Catching him in my arms I saw Chris collapse the floor in tears.

Hugo secreted blood from three places on his body, without some medical attention he would die, probably of blood loss or the gash to his head that looked serious. Quickly, I ripped out the stone protruding from his shoulder and yelled to Chris, "Bring me bandages, or cloth, something to clot the blood!"

She ran across the town looking for some sort of cloth. She ran into the doorway of a house snatched the bed sheets from the vacant bed and heaved her legs foreword back to us on the ground, a twenty year old man dying in my arms.

Throwing the sheets to me, I quickly tore them into smaller strips, one that I wrapped around his shoulder like a mummy. Another I strategically wrapped around his head leaving his eyes and nose and mouth still visible. Blood could be seen, seeping through the sheets, the blood loss was getting more serious, and Hugo's eyes began to droop down. Either was going to pass out, or fade out of life.

Chris tried to conjure a water spell to heal him, but the blood kept pouring from him. I grabbed her by her green tunic and yelled, "Try a more powerful spell woman! This is your fault! Revive this kid!" Chris seemed helpless and tried spell after spell but none of them seemed to work. Something was wrong, very wrong.

If he were dead his rune would be seen trying to find another keeper, but if he wasn't dead why weren't Chris' spells working? The world stopped making sense.

I think it was then I realized that with time stopped the rune was trapped in his body. At a moment he was dead and with time gone Chris couldn't revive him while he was for a second a normal human. Hugo was then a living, or dead, paradox of this world itself.

I looked on in horror and explained this to Chris, tears roaring from her eyes glued to the body, or corpse, of Hugo. Again, I tried to slow down my mind for a second and think what would happen to the rune. If it were trapped in his body, in even a hypothetical world it would still have to exist for the world to have fire.

Paradox after Paradox streamed through my head.

That's when his eyes opened again. But no other movement happened. He just sat there, blinking, monument in the center of the town with no qualities to him whatsoever. In the modern world he is what you would call a vegetable. I understood then why, but not how. The person, Hugo, was dead. But the rune still substantiated life in him, but had no mind for human functions. Only necessary ones like breathing and blinking still worked.

For all practical purposes he was a corpse and I let out a great sigh of pain. I rose up from my crouched, earthed position, to standing up, trying to let emotion sieve through me. In a decidedly calm voice I told Chris, "I want some answers and I want them now."

That is when Chris took a sword to her throat…


End file.
